


day trip

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-30
Updated: 2008-07-30
Packaged: 2017-10-03 20:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've barely stepped back through the gate, and already Teyla is scheduled for a full day of meetings with half a dozen committee members from the IOA. The usual bureaucratic hostility aimed towards aliens who have no perceived reason to be loyal to Earth has seemingly vanished in the face of the engineering report about the substantial and easily-mined veins of uranium, copper and weapons grade naquadah which run thick-seamed through Athosian soil. Teyla is suddenly much in demand; though not, she tells Rodney as she hands Torren over into his waiting arms, much inclined to accede to their requests.</p>
            </blockquote>





	day trip

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Geeklite

They've barely stepped back through the gate, and already Teyla is scheduled for a full day of meetings with half a dozen committee members from the IOA. The usual bureaucratic hostility aimed towards aliens who have no perceived reason to be loyal to Earth has seemingly vanished in the face of the engineering report about the substantial and easily-mined veins of uranium, copper and weapons grade naquadah which run thick-seamed through Athosian soil. Teyla is suddenly much in demand; though not, she tells Rodney as she hands Torren over into his waiting arms, much inclined to accede to their requests.

"You're going to willingly sit through eight hours of meetings with a bunch of stuffed-shirt bureaucrats just so you can tell them no?" Rodney asks dubiously, one hand rubbing at Torren's back in an attempt to keep him hushed.

"Mmm," Teyla says, an almost dreamy little smile playing about the corner of her mouth. "It has been quite a while since I have had the opportunity to best so many in debate at once. I believe it will be... entertaining."

"Huh," Rodney says, and shrugs. He can't argue with that—the sport of pointing out to people just how big an idiot they are is a fun one, and one highly underrated by the population at large. "Sheppard going with you?"

"No." Teyla steps into her skirt, settles it so that it hangs just right from her hips and does up the lacings with a practised hand. "He has been requested to meet with Generals Landry and O'Neill, I believe. And before you ask, he will be in meetings for as long as I will, so you cannot 'off load' Torren on him." She has that faintly amused, faintly quizzical expression on her face that she always gets when she finds some Earth idiom mildly ridiculous.

"I was not going to _off load Torren on_—"

"Rodney."

"It's just that how often am I on Earth when my services are not required to save the day! I have free time, and there are many, many people in the labs here whom it is my duty to berate for the—"

"Rodney." Teyla isn't even looking at him, is peering into the mirror while she coils her hair up on top of her head; must have long since realised that his bluster is all for show where Torren is concerned—long afternoons where Rodney's found himself entirely capable of getting work done from his laptop, sitting on the floor beside Torren's crib, have given the lie to that.

"Fine, fine." He makes a show of giving in, sighing and shifting Torren from one arm to the other. "Ronon's free today, right? We can all go do, uh..." Rodney stops to think; tries to imagine what kind of entertainment Colorado Springs could contain that would cater to all three of them: Ronon, restless; Rodney, easily bored; Torren, who has not yet learned that not everything his tiny hands can grasp is made for eating.

"Teal'c is not scheduled to arrive back until this evening, yes," Teyla says, tying the straps of her sandals so that they coil around her slim brown legs—and god, how much does the sight of them make Rodney wish that this were a different kind of vacation for all of them, the five of them not being housed in the concrete gloom of the SGC. "So Ronon will be free for most of the day, and as for what you can do for today," she says with a sunny smile, producing a piece of paper from her skirt pocket, both sides of it covered with Teyla's careful calligraphy, "I have some suggestions."

Rodney eyes it and groans. Teyla's suggestions always have a habit of turning out well for her—and in fairness, usually for him, given how his weekly quota of orgasms has dramatically increased over the past two years or so—it's just that they so often involve pain on his part along the way.

It takes a little bit of wheedling—and one open-mouthed kiss, Rodney's hand curled around Ronon's wrist to feel the shockingly fine bones there—for Ronon to agree to leave the SGC with Rodney, but finally he grunts and acquiesces, but only once they've both eaten a second breakfast. Rodney finds that those are the kinds of terms he can negotiate.

The SGC support staff and Ronon appear to have come to some kind of truce—the wrist bracers are still there, as are the boots, and Rodney would bet a substantial amount of money that there are more than enough knives secreted about Ronon's person that going anywhere near a metal detector would be a bad idea—but the leather and the homespun have been replaced with a pair of jeans and a crisp, white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. With his dreads pulled neatly back from his face and the dark-framed glasses he's wearing, Ronon looks as if he'd be entirely at home on Berkeley's campus—all drama student poise and hipster nonchalance, making a study of teasing apart words to find the truth at the heart of them.

Not that he looks very out of place here either—born three million light years away and Ronon's still somehow acquired the art of slouching along at Rodney's heels, hands jammed in his pockets, with the bored air of someone for whom a department store holds neither fear nor fascination. It's a trick of fitting in that Rodney's never acquired.

At least Sheppard didn't come along, Rodney thinks with a sigh—John gets a look of fear in his eye that borders on the crazed if faced with the prospect of shopping for anything other than new golf clubs. Faced with a shopping list that demands half a hundred things for Torren and for Teyla—with arcane names that Rodney supposes are intelligible to anyone who's been socialised female but which are a mystery to him—and a Ronon who is looking with interest at a selection of sweater vest, and Rodney is more than happy to have just John's credit card right now.

"You supposed to have that?" Ronon says when Rodney digs the black AmEx out of his wallet; children's shoes are, it seems, ruinously expensive, even when they can't quite walk in them yet. Rodney is experiencing both new-found respect for Jeannie having raised Madison on a grad student's budget, and gratitude for the fact that John's trust fund is probably large enough to buy a small country in Latin America.

"You mean _legally_ supposed to? Because the law is such a nuanced thing..." Rodney adjusts the sling that is keeping Torren tucked snug and warm against his chest; the little guy is quiet for now, but he's blowing spit bubbles against Rodney's chest, and Rodney can feel the damp soaking through the cotton of his t-shirt.

Ronon arches an eyebrow at him.

"Whatever," Rodney says, forcing an air of nonchalance about the whole thing, feeling his chin tilt up, "what's a little bit of technical credit card fraud between people engaged in a legally unrecognised, moderately-kinky common-law marriage? It's not like you objected that time I used it to order stuff from Good Vibrations."

Ronon smirks; behind him someone coughs; and somehow Rodney just knows that if he turns around, he'll see a gaggle of very respectable Colorado Springs sales assistants, all polyester and red cheeks and scandalised expressions. He sighs, decides to make the best of it, and turns, brandishing the credit card and a handful of onesies at the bemused clerks.

"Do you have this in a larger size?" he demands of the bleach-blonde who's looking at him as if he's the heralded coming of a bisexual Satan and ignores Ronon's snickering. Rodney hopes Teyla is happy with having inflicted this on him, uses his free hand to rub soothing circles on the back of a now-grizzling Torren, and sends assistants scattering here and there in search for clothes for his son; sighs and thinks _never thought family would look like this._


End file.
